Factice is
vulcanized
Vulcanization (British: Vulcanisation) is a range of processes for hardening rubbers. The term originally referred exclusively to the treatment of natural rubber with sulfur, which remains the most common practice. It has also grown to include ...
unsaturated vegetable or animal oil, used as a processing aid and property modifier in
rubber.
Longer chain
fatty-acid containing oils such as
rapeseed
Rapeseed (''Brassica napus ''subsp.'' napus''), also known as rape, or oilseed rape, is a bright-yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family), cultivated mainly for its oil-rich seed, which naturally contains ...
or
meadowfoam produce a harder, more desirable factice.
Soybean oil produces lower quality factice, though it can be mixed with longer-chain oils to yield factice nearly as good as that made from long chain oils alone.
Oil-resistant factice is made with
castor oil
Castor oil is a vegetable oil pressed from castor beans.
It is a colourless or pale yellow liquid with a distinct taste and odor. Its boiling point is and its density is 0.961 g/cm3. It includes a mixture of triglycerides in which abou ...
.
Cross-link
In chemistry and biology a cross-link is a bond or a short sequence of bonds that links one polymer chain to another. These links may take the form of covalent bonds or ionic bonds and the polymers can be either synthetic polymers or natural ...
ing the fatty-acid chains with
sulfur (brown factice) or
S2Cl2 (white factice) yields a rubbery material that improves the processing characteristics and ozone resistance of rubber.
Varying the amount of factice changes the physical properties of the rubber; molded items might be 5-10% factice, extrusions 15-30%. Rubber erasers can have as much as 4 times as much factice as rubber in their composition.
References
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Vegetable oils